Germany remains one of the few bastions bucking a growing trend towards populism, according to a survey. For many respondents, the economy is rigged in favor of the rich and they want a strong leader to change it.
Image: Getty Images/J. Schlueter
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People around the world believe the political system is rigged against them, a survey by Ipsos revealed on Thursday, highlighting a growing trend towards populism globally.
Levels of political distrust and a desire for strong leaders who are willing to break the rules mirrors the political zeitgeist surrounding the election of US President Donald Trump and the British decision to leave the European Union.
The new Ipsos survey of 18,000 people in 27 countries, last undertaken six months ago, came to three major conclusions:
Most people feel left out of the "normal order" of life in their country:
70% said the economy is rigged to favor the rich and powerful (up 1 percentage point).
66% felt that traditional parties and politicians don't care about people like them (up 2 points).
54% agreed that their country's society is broken (down 4 points).
Populist sentiment is widespread:
64% said their country needs a strong leader to take it back from the rich and powerful (up 1 point).
62% felt that local experts don't understand the lives of people like them (up 2 points).
49% say that, to fix it, their country needs a strong leader willing to break the rules (unchanged).
Nativist views are common
60% say employers should prioritize hiring people of their country over immigrants when jobs are scarce (up 4 points).
60% disagree their country would be better off if it let in all immigrants who wanted to come there (up 1 point).
43% agree that immigrants take important social services away from their country's "real” nationals (up 4 points).
Female faces of Europe's right-wing populists
The number of women supporting far-right populist parties is on the rise in Europe. These are some of the women influencing far-right politics across the bloc.
Image: AP
France: Marine Le Pen
Marine Le Pen has led France's far-right populist National Rally party, formerly known as the National Front, since 2011. Le Pen has tried to soften her party's far-right image, going as far as to expel her own father — the party's founder — from the party after he referred to Nazi gas chambers as "a point of detail of the history of World War II."
Image: Reuters/E. Gailard
Germany: Frauke Petry
Frauke Petry's anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies helped the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) enter the German parliament in 2017. She quit as leader of the AfD in September, 2017, due to what she said were extremist statements by other party leaders preventing "constructive opposition." She now sits as an independent in both the national and regional Saxony parliament in Germany.
Image: picture-alliance/Eventpress
Germany: Alice Weidel
Alice Weidel has been co-chair of the AfD since October, 2017 following Petry's departure. A 2013 email revealed Weidel describing Germany as being "overrun by culturally foreign people such as Arabs, Sinti and Roma." The email also described the government as "pigs" who were "puppets of WWII allies." Weidel's party opposes same-sex marriage, but she in a same-sex partnership herself.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/B. von Jutrczenka
Poland: Beata Szydlo
Beata Szydlo is the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland and vice chairman of the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS) that holds the majority in the parliament. The party is strongly against EU migrant quotas and in 2017, then-Prime Minister Szydlo came under fire for seemingly using an appearance at former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi German death camp to highlight her anti-migrant policies.
Image: Getty Images
Norway: Siv Jensen
Siv Jensen leads Norway's Progress party, which is a part of the center-right government coalition. She promotes individual rights and freedoms, and has listed former British Conservative Party Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher among her political heroes. Jensen is an outspoken supporter of Israel, and has called to move the Norwegian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Italy: Giorgia Meloni
Co-founder and leader of the national conservative Brothers of Italy party, Giorgia Meloni has a long history in far-right politics. She joined the Youth Front, the youth-wing of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, at age 15. From May 2008 to November 2011 Meloni was minister of youth under Silvio Berlusconi. Her party is currently in the center-right coalition that's in power in Italy.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Denmark: Pia Kjaersgaard
Pia Kjaersgaard is co-founder of the far-right Danish People's Party, which she led from 1995 to 2012. She is known for her strong anti-multiculturalism and immigration views. Her main interests are stemming immigration into Denmark and care for the elderly. In 2003, she lost a libel suit in the Danish Supreme Court against anti-EU activist Karen Sunds who had said Kjaersgaard's views were racist.
Image: AP
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Germany bucks the populism trend: Germany was one of just three countries in which less than half of respondents felt a strong leader was the answer to their political shortcomings. It was joined by Japan and Sweden, which nonetheless had the biggest increase in populist tendencies.
Although the survey didn't establish a working definition, many researchers use Dutch political scientist Cas Mudde's definition of populism. Mudde dubs populism "an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups … and which argues that politics should be an expression of the (general will) of the people."
"The data confirms the serious political upheavals we have seen in recent years," says Dr. Robert Grimm, head of political and social research at Ipsos in Germany. "Deep ideological differences are openly lived out in many Western European countries and, if necessary, are also settled with politically motivated violence."
"On the other hand, many Germans see no solution in a strong leader, probably also because of their profound experience with totalitarian regimes," Grimm continued. "Thus, in an apathetic political culture, the country is driving from one unwanted coalition to the next, without concretely seeking a new social contract.
AfD leaders and their most offensive remarks
Leading members of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have often made provocative, if not outright offensive, remarks — targeting refugees or evoking Nazi terminology.
Image: Britta Pedersen/dpa/picture alliance
Björn Höcke
The head of the AfD in the state of Thuringia first made headlines in 2017 for referring to Berlin's Holocaust memorial as a "monument of shame" and calling on the country to stop atoning for its Nazi past. In July 2023, he echoed Nazi rhetoric by declaring that "This EU must die so that the true Europe may live." In 2019, a court ruled that it was not slanderous to describe Höcke as a fascist.
Image: picture-alliance/Arifoto Ug/Candy Welz
Alice Weidel
One of the best-known public faces of the AfD, party co-chair Alice Weidel rarely shies away from causing a row. Her belligerent rhetoric caused particular controversy in a Bundestag speech in 2018, when she declared, "burqas, headscarf girls, publicly-supported knife men, and other good-for-nothings will not secure our prosperity, economic growth, and the social state."
Image: Sebastian Kahnert/dpa/picture-alliance
Maximilian Krah
Maximilian Krah, the AfD's top candidate in the 2024 European Parliament election, has called the EU a "vassal" of the US and wants to replace it with a "confederacy of fatherlands." He also wants to end support for Ukraine, and has warned on Twitter that immigration will lead to an "Umvolkung" of the German people — a Nazi-era term similar to the far-right's "great replacement" conspiracy theory.
Image: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images
Alexander Gauland
Former parliamentary party leader Gauland was roundly criticized for a speech he made to the AfD's youth wing in June 2018. He said Germany had a "glorious history and one that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history."
Christian Lüth
Ex-press officer Christian Lüth had already faced demotion for past contentious comments before being caught on camera talking to a right-wing YouTube video blogger. "The worse things get for Germany, the better they are for the AfD," Lüth allegedly said, before turning his focus to migrants. "We can always shoot them later, that's not an issue. Or gas them, as you wish. It doesn't matter to me."
Image: Soeren Stache/dpa/picture-alliance
Beatrix von Storch
Initially, the AfD campaigned against the euro and bailouts — but that quickly turned into anti-immigrant rhetoric. "People who won't accept STOP at our borders are attackers," the European lawmaker said in 2016. "And we have to defend ourselves against attackers," she said — even if this meant shooting at women and children.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/M. Murat
Harald Weyel
Not all of the AfD's scandals are about racism: Sometimes they are just revealing. Bundestag member Harald Weyel was caught in a scandal in September 2022 when a microphone he clearly didn't know was on caught him expressing his hope that Germany would suffer a "dramatic winter" of high energy prices or else "things will just go on as ever."
Image: Christoph Hardt /Future Image/imago images
Andre Poggenburg
Poggenburg, former head of the AfD in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, has also raised eyebrows with extreme remarks. In February 2017, he urged other lawmakers in the state parliament to join measures against the extreme left-wing in order to "get rid of, once and for all, this rank growth on the German racial corpus" — the latter term clearly derived from Nazi terminology.
